Upgrading Horizon View Composer to 7.12, How to?

Horizon View Composer server is optional and it is required only if we are planning to use linked clones in the environment.

In previous post, we discussed the Upgrade order, Product interoperability, Database compatibility and upgrade process for Horizon Client. Since we are discussing how to upgrade to Horizon 7.12 release, and I already have linked clones and View Composer in my lab environment, I will have to upgrade the Composer server.

We will discuss View composer upgrade process along with system requirement for View Composer in this post. So to begin with, let’s look at system requirement for View composer server.

View Composer OS Requirements

View Composer can be installed on physical server or virtual machine and it requires 64-bit operating system platform. Supported 64-bit operating system for View composer server are as follows:

Operating System

Version

Edition

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

64-bit

Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter

Windows Server 2012 R2

64-bit

Standard, Datacenter

Windows Server 2016

64-bit

Standard, Datacenter

Windows Server 2019

64-bit

Standard, Datacenter

As discussed in previous post, Windows Server 2008 R2 EOS and EOL was on 14th Jan 2020. So you should upgrade to at least Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system. In my lab environment, I am already running View composer 7.7 on Windows server 2012 R2 Standard. So in my setup, I just need to upgrade View composer server to 7.12 release.

View Composer Hardware Requirements

H/W Component

Required

Recommended

Processor

1.4 GHz or faster (Intel-64/AMD-64 processor with 2 CPUs )

2 GHz or faster, 4 CPUs

Networking

One or more 10/100 Mbps NICs

1 Gbps

Memory

RAM 4 GB or higher

8 GB or higher RAM if 50 or more remote desktops

Disk space

40 GB

60 GB

I am already running the required configuration for View Composer Server 7.12 as in image below. That saves some extra efforts on my part. 🙂

Database Requirements for View Composer

View Composer requires an SQL database to store the linked clone related data. Since I am upgrading existing Horizon environment, existing database instance can be used during upgrade process provided that version of database server instance is supported.

In my setup, I am already running SQL Server 2017, so that should be ok to continue.

View Composer installer automatically upgrades the required database schema, so I do not need to perform that manually.

Manually it can be done through command line using sviconfigcmdlet as shown Below

Security-Related Requirements

On View Composer, do not run applications that use Windows SSL libraries which requires SSL v2. The View Composer installer disables SSLv2 on the Microsoft Secure channel. SSL v3, TLS v1.0, and RC 4 are also disabled by default.

Well I am using self signed certificates since this is a lab environment. And I am OK with getting certificate warnings too 🙂

Now that we have View Composer server system requirements covered, it is time for the action. I mean upgrade the View Composer server :).

Note:

During upgrade process, Horizon 7 does not support View Composer provisioning and maintenance operations.

Provisioning and recompose operations are not supported during the transitional period if you have any Horizon 7 servers that are still running with previous version.

You can perform these operations only when all instances of Horizon Connection Server and View Composer have been upgraded to 7.12 release.